Robert McNamara was President of the World Bank twice. Prior to that, he was the Defence Secretary in Kennedy's Cabinet. He was drafted into these as he was highly efficient. When he addressed a team of experts, he went to the blackboard and wrote a series of numbers. Before he started his explanation, the team was convinced. The numbers were convincing in themselves. Wherever he was, he was a byword for efficiency. Efficiency is satisfying and more fulfilling than the career. His varied career was not one that could fill him with overflowing happiness. Recently, after being a widower for 23 years, he married at the age of 88. He seeks in a second wife a fulfilment which the high posts he filled with distinction and the marriage to his first wife did not give him. Man is an eternal seeker. He seeks for the Godhead. He is the runner who attains not his goal.
A woman completes a man's life, even as he does hers. At the primary level, she is the physical phenomenon who bears his children. Only a woman can extend his physical body in this world by his offspring. Vitally, he needs company. Anyone can be his companion, but what he gets from a wife as companionship no man or no other woman can ever give. A half inch nut fits a bolt of half an inch. Man is a non-standard bolt who will fit only that woman who is made for him. I have heard a few intellectuals who felt that their wives were their intellectual complements. I could not see the intellectual glow that such a complement offers on their faces. Intellect in different people develops in different angles. They sometimes offer a complementary role, though rarely. Such lucky individuals will have their intellects fired, ripening at a higher level.
Those born in affectionate families feel in their elements while at home. It may be intense and enjoyable, but it is not fulfilment. A soldier's life is fulfilled at the battlefront when his courage rises sky high, but when he rules as a result of conquest, a rare fulfilment that is denied to him in pitched battle comes to him. Whatever man seeks, he really seeks God. Whether it is in duty, heroism, sacrifice, devotion, or integrity, what he really seeks is God in them. Duty responds to honour, heroism to courage, sacrifice to his expansive being, devotion to heart, integrity to the Truth, but all these are high, partial responses. Only a woman can be a COMPLEMENT to a man, especially a mature Personality, in all these aspects, and still offer more. She is a complement to his Being. When she is a complement to his evolving Being, she is the Shakti. Elderly men advise youngsters enamoured of brahmacharyam, "Every man needs a woman. Unless you take to a higher life of idealism, later in life you will regret it." To see in a wife the integral complement she is to him, one must be incapable of knowing her defects, as "she" has really none!